Family And Academic Performance

Concept of Family and Family Background

Family is the most important primary cluster and the smallest social unit of the society. Odo (1990) defined family as a social group of people sharing the same residence and cooperating economically. He added that family institution is usually based on the marriage between one or more couples, with the expectation of having children for whom the adults of the family accept responsibility.

Alio (2005) opined that family is the most personal social organisation, because of the interaction and relationship that exists among the family members. Alio stated further that married couples without children, though bound by the strong personal ties; do not constitute a family because such ties can feasibly exist among couples who are not married. According to Alio, what constitute a family are children. It is through which that intimate and personal relationship can be established, and by which the family can perform its functions of rearing, protecting and educating the children, transmitting of social values and a special bond among all the members. The above explanations of family portray Nigerian traditional idea of family. Traditionally, African people believed that it is the children that strengthen the union of a couple and makes it a lasting and an intimate one.

Basically, family can be classified into two; nuclear and extended forms. The nuclear family is made up of the father (husband), mother (wife) and children. The children may be the biological offspring of the couple or the adopted members of the family. According to Okafor (1982), the adoption of children is not a common phenomenon in the Nigeria society compared to the British society. Okafor noted that nuclear family is more common among the urban city elites in Nigerian society. It was maintained that one of the characteristics of the nuclear family is that, it tends to break up when the children marry, when the parents die or at any point in human cycle.

Nuclear Family: In this type of family, two married adults (a man and a woman) live under one roof together, as husband and wife, with their children, if any, and share emotional, economic and social responsibilities. This type of family is usually referred to as intact family. Thus, the intact family is the smallest kinship unit that appears in many societies and which also functions as independent and self-sufficient unit. The functions of this family unit include; among others, sexual regulation, education, socialization of the children, economic cooperation, protection and order, as well as transmission of individual goals and societal values from one generation to the other.

Single-Parent Family: The house is led by one parent (a woman or a man), possibly due to divorce, death, desertion, or never having married. Therefore the individual concerned as parent plays the roles of both the father and the mother concurrently. In this case, fulfilment of all the needs of the family may at times be jeopardized, which may make life difficult for those members of the family. Furthermore children of such family often exhibit various externalizing behaviours or anti-social behaviours at adolescence stage of life (Emmanuel 2009).

Family size has to do with the total number of people in a single family which may include the father, mother, children and even the extended members – all living in one hamlet. According to Alio (2005), family size has implication for education. The size of the family determines to a great extent the relative amount of physical attention and time which each child gets from his parents. Large families are more common among the lower class of the society and children in this type of family may experience poverty, lack parental encouragement and stimulus that supposed to motivate their academic achievement (Eamon, 2006).

Family is the beginning of the process of education, as it provides physical and psychological needs of the child. This supports the view of Maduewisi and Unoaka (2007) that the environmental experiences from peer group, school location and family are determinant of child’s intellectual ability. Bright children from under-privileged family environment may turn dull due to poor family environment. This corroborates the assertion of Hebb (1958) that the innate potentials of children cannot be attained without adequate stimulating family environment. This implies that a proper stimulating family environment with appropriate teaching methods will enhance students’ intellectual capability and consequently, immensely contribute to positive academic performance of children.

Extended family comprises the father (husband), his wife (mother), their children, and the husbands and the wife’s relations. Alio (2005) pointed out that the extended family system is a scattered type of the joint family and all the members of the family are not living together in one residence. The extended members include a span of three or four generations within the total family unit. The extended family system is commonly a characteristic of most African society. Many Nigerian societies do not believe in nuclear family, however, urbanization and economic pressures are strongly discouraging extended family ties. Despite this, extended family system is the most common type of family arrangement in the Nigerian society. Anybody who refuses to practice or show interest in the extended family system might be regarded as awkward human being by the society.

Academic Performance

In educational institutions, success is measured by academic performance, or how well a student meets standards set out by the institution itself. Performance is very important in human life and every society has its own goals and aspiration. Students’ success or failure in the school therefore presents a relatively defined criterion of performance. Educational institutions are the areas in which all students are prepared to compete. Performance refers to the attainment of the students in the classroom activities as well as in extra curriculum activities in the school. Campell and Mande (1990) defined performance as the knowledge obtained and skills developed in the school, which is often depicted by test scores. That is, the mark earned by each student from task (test).

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Performance in school is evaluated in a number of ways. For regular grading, students demonstrate their knowledge by taking written and oral tests, performing presentations, turning in homework and participating in class activities and discussions. Teachers evaluate in terms of letter or number grades and side notes, to describe how well a student has done. At the state level, students are evaluated by their performance on standardised tests geared toward specific ages and based on a set of achievements students in each age group are expected to meet. The subjectivity of academic performance evaluation has lessened in recent years, but it has not been totally eliminated. It may not be possible to fully remove subjectivity from the current evaluation methods since most evaluations are based on students’ response to traditional teaching methods. Standardised testing is best responded to by students who excel in reading, mathematics and test taking; a skill that is in itself indicative of academic worth (Hess, 1998).

Academic performance means the ability of students to study and learn certain subjects in the school whether at the primary, secondary or tertiary institution levels with the aim of performing excellently in the course of study. It could be described as notable actions or achievements by certain students in their field of study or discipline. Academic performance is measured through achievement test which is also known as paper and pencil test. Achievement test is a type of ability test designed to measure what an individual had learnt at the end of a course of instruction. In other words, it is meant to assess the level of academic attainment after a period of teaching and learning (Richardson, 1994).

Academic performance really means three things: the ability to study and remember facts, being able to study effectively and see how facts fit together and form larger patterns of knowledge and being able to think for oneself in relation to facts and thirdly being able to communicate one’s knowledge verbally (Chance, 2003). According to Gbadura (2010), students’ academic performance varies according to individual students’ scores such as high, average or low academic performance. Students who place higher premium on education are inspired to enhance the development of their intellect and this fosters academic performance.

However, in a success-oriented society, academic performance is a significant measure of success in life. The reasons for this cannot be farfetched; it provides the singular index of intellectual ability and aptitude on every individual. Gbadura (2010) opined that academic performance serve as the only clear cut measure of student success and adequacy for a life career. Similarly, Hess (1998) emphasised that high and low performance is when a learner does well or poorly in a presented task. It may be said that obtaining scores in an examination best describes what performance is all about: Who stated that examinations are the most useful yard stick in assessing students’ knowledge? She further stated that when the result is good or bad, it serves as guide for deciding who gets promoted to the next class, demoted to a lower class, or who finally gets what job after graduation. This is a pointer to the fact that the issue of performance to learners cannot be under-estimated. Ojo (1997) stated that students’ performance is a measure of how well they have mastered the learning task presented to them. It covers the way they handle controversial issues, pass relevant judgment and the level at which they pass examinations.

In the same vein, academic performance is the students’ accomplishment in terms of grades obtained in a given test. Academic performance is often determined by the individual scores in relation to a given standard, or sometimes in relation to the performance of other students in a class test or examination. Poor academic performance among students has become the trend in most examinations especially those conducted by the West African Examination Council (WAEC) and National Examination Council (NECO). Over the years, results of various examinations conducted by these bodies in the country have not brought cheer for parents and students due to poor performance recorded across board (WAEC Embarrassing Results, 2011).

Measuring excellent academic performance of students is challenging since students’ performance is a product of many factors including the level of development of the country (Idiong, 1991). The recent fall in academic performance of students is a great concern to parents, teachers, government, society, communities, counsellors and administrators. Excellent academic performance is seen as a powerful instrument for the enhancement of growth and development. High or low standard of education in any system can influence high or low academic performance of the recipients of the education (Linder, 2002). Some researchers have attributed this low academic performance to low students’ ability, poor attitude, lack of capacity, interest or low motivation and emotional state of students (Ipaye, 1985; Asonibare, 1985).

Bearing the above in mind, students’ academic performance in school is therefore the main focus in educational institutions. Senior Secondary school certificate examination (SSSCE) results of Nigeria students are used as measures of academic performance because it is a standardised type of summative evaluation.

Omoegun (2003) explained some problems connected with poor attitude towards schooling and poor study habits of secondary school students to include students’ refusal to carry out assignment given to them by subject teachers. This has negative impact on the continuous assessment scores and grades. Similarly, many students do not care to go over their notes until when examinations remain only one day. Also poor time management, hatred of one subject or the other, usually result to poor academic performance. These persistent problems clearly show a trend by considering the performance of students on some subjects in SSCE June/July 2005/2006 NECO results 2007 and 2008 respectively. Moreover, the findings of Aminu (2001) and Awolola (2001) showed that academic performance of Nigerian secondary school students continues to be on the decline as a result of negative attitude to schooling.

Academic performance can also be viewed to be the average score in the school examination at any particular point in time. Salaam (2002) posited that, the goal of many students is high academic success. However, this good intention may be thwarted by the defective study habits and study techniques employed by the students. In other words, when a student is deficient in his study habits techniques, it leads to poor academic performance of such student; thus, frustration occurs. This experience highly becomes a repetitive cycle of an unserious preparation for examination, resulting in failure in examinations (i.e academic failure, frustration syndrome (Ikibe, 2012).